I would be interested to hear what everyone thinks his or her strengths (or weaknesses) in writing might be. For instance, I like to think that I'm good at working on characters and using their dialogue to form connections. I also like to make their motivations and philosophies evident in the text. I'm not very good at finding big, epic plot points though. Also, do you use this strength often to form a particular style? Feel free to pat yourselves on the back. I won't judge. MM
I personally feel my greatest strength is the fleshing out I do to my characters in their development. Its not large stuff that makes the story, but the little things that you could take out and they don't effect the plot but build the character in a real way (the character who colors with crayons to curb her anxiety, the guy that drops his father's name in conversation way too much, the ex-slave who compulsively spends hours in front of a mirror on her appearance even when not going anywhere in particular, etc). I do feel like I use this strength in my writing because I focus on these aspects without blatantly calling attention to them. These items then show the development of the character without it feeling like you're being hit over the head with it. My weakness though is definitely dialogue. It always feels so forced when I write it.
I believe my greatest strength is plot. I also think I'm fair with dialogue and characterization. My greatest weakness is definitely setting, which is unfortunate since I love fantasy. I can have a beautiful setting in my head, but struggle to put it into words elegantly. It always comes out clunky.
Putting meaning into words, to make descriptive imagery, vividly. It makes for lesser quality sentences, disregarding the expressive quality of common, conventional ways of expression, which can be very confusing. I need to always re-edit so that my text remains something comprehensible, with regard to the means of communication, not the meaning behind it. Which I've said, is a strong quality I have, although there are downsides. I think the fault there is too little education and too little experience, or that being motivated somehow doesn't tap into that source of what I know sufficiently. The pitfall is making very intensive short stories, when all is said and done. If writing was the profession of barista, I'd have no trouble making espresso's, and gaze at the powerful mechanisms of creating a latte.
My strength is characters. It's the only thing in writing that comes easily to me. Characters usually just pop into my head, fully formed, and I'm grateful for that. I'm terrible at plots. I'm a pantser, so I'm not really concerned about plot at the outset. But at some point, during revision, I have to acknowledge plot! And I can't stand it. I wish it would just happen the way I want it to!
My strengths are the flow of the language and the dialogues. Plot is the thing I struggle most with, it doesn't come naturally to me so I have to plan my stories beforehand and put a lot of thought into that for my stories to make sense. I'm also weak on settings.
Probably conveying emotion and atmosphere - internal narrative and descriptions are usually my forte.
Voice, apparently. I would have said dialogue and characterization, but editors generally say "voice". I guess dialogue is probably part of that? Maybe.
I would say style, which boiled down would probably be my urge to angle. I love to find the angle in the sentence to give the description the right punch, the setting the right mood, the character the right edge.
I think I'm pretty decent at conveying feelings and emotions, something that's generally a theme in my writing. My greatest weakness, though, is probably story line (I'm good at coming up with endings, but not the path to get there), me being a pantser and all.
I'd say my strength is the actual writing. Stringing the right words together in just the right order and number to make the sentences flow smoothly from one to another with no kinks or hitches to slow me down when I read it. But plotting? My biggest challenge!
I like to believe it's realistic and interesting characters, though I sometimes have too much trouble conveying that.
I like to think that I'm good at writing scenes that hook you, get your pulse racing, evoke the emotions I want to evoke, etc. But, I'm not so good at plot or subtlety.
Characters. I love to write interesting characters and personalities and developing them. I'm pretty good with plot to but in 90 percent of anything I write, the characters are created before anything else. I could use improvement in my prose and editing better I'd say.
My biggest strength is I am a perfectionist. I will rework revise and edit details until I feel they are real. Overall I am decent at looking at the outline and finding flaws or fixing flaws. People say I have nice characters too. Random side note. My characters tend to lean towards being girls. Is that weird? Not like femanine either. I generally try and write neutral gender characters concepts and let them decide which way they want to be. They keep wanting to be girls. And when I find for plot reasons I need a boy I tend to not write them as well. I don't know why.
I tend to write boys. Of course, my "business philosophy" might have something to do with that. I want to write stories which will encourage teen boys to read more, so I try to write characters and situations to which they can relate (and then inject them with science fiction and fantasy).
My strength is probably fleshing out the setting with details here and there. I probably enjoy writing up unimportant little details about the setting and making up names, words and languages a lot more than writing a narrative, but that doesn't make for a story, of course. I keep a couple text files around where I can write up these kinds of things even if they end up never making it into a story. I think I'm also good at putting characters through awful situations, which is a bit strange since I write escapist Fantasy. To be fair, I also enjoy smashing all that awfulness to bits in the end so it can all turn out fine. What I have trouble with is writing conversations. It's mostly not the dialogue itself that gives me trouble, but how to package it. The narrative disintegrates into a featureless void of direct speech and synonyms for "said" and it's beyond awkward. I run out of actions the characters could be doing when they're really just standing around and talking and then I just hope I don't have to make them say much more. I wrote a story recently that is almost entirely an in-universe story told by a character (who, to make it more awkward, is also the 1st person narrator of the frame narrative) to other characters and it's the worst thing I have ever written.
